Friday, March 29, 2013

I have some advice – unsolicited – for whoever takes over
from Peter Cavanagh, the chief executive of Radio New Zealand, who steps down toward
the end of this year.

RNZ is a national treasure, but it’s a flawed treasure, and
that makes it vulnerable. By correcting the most obvious of those flaws, whoever
takes over from Mr Cavanagh could help protect the organisation against political
interference.

RNZ’s vulnerability arises from the fact that it’s a
non-commercial broadcaster owned by a government which, insofar as it could be
said to be ideologically committed to anything, favours private enterprise.

In itself, that shouldn’t place the organisation at risk.
RNZ has co-existed relatively amicably with National governments before. The
very reason National has remained the dominant party in New Zealand since the
1950s is that it’s essentially pragmatic, and happy to live with a mix of
private and public ownership.

But the political climate has changed in recent years. The
global financial crisis has put pressure on the government to save money
wherever it can.

John Key’s government is not ideologically averse to state
ownership of key broadcasting assets. That’s obvious, since it continues to
cling to Television New Zealand long after TVNZ abandoned any pretence of being
a public service broadcaster (and probably long after anyone else would have
been interested in buying it).

But at least TVNZ returns a profit, albeit a relatively
modest one ($19.2 million after tax last year). RNZ does no such thing. It is
funded by the taxpayer and generates no commercial revenue.

Its funding has been frozen since 2009, which suggests it
doesn’t rate highly in the government’s priorities. In fact if Wellington
gossip is to be believed, there are influential figures in the government who
are at best indifferent, and possibly even hostile, to the state broadcaster.

Take Steven Joyce, for example. As the fourth-ranked
minister in the Cabinet, he carries a lot of clout – probably more than his
ranking suggests.

He is also a former broadcasting entrepreneur who built a
small New Plymouth radio station into the RadioWorks network and pocketed $6
million when he sold his interest.

Mr Joyce is said to be less than sympathetic to arguments
that RNZ deserves more money. And while there may be others in the Cabinet who
don’t share his robust support for private enterprise (it would be interesting,
for example, to know the attitude of someone like the Attorney-General, Chris Finlayson),
the brutal reality is that National probably takes the view that there’s little
electoral risk in upsetting RNZ listeners because most of them vote Labour
anyway.

So what might the new RNZ chief executive do to enhance the
organisation’s standing in a political climate that is less than favourable?
One obvious step is to take a tougher line against the editorial bias that
still permeates some RNZ programmes.

Public broadcasting organisations, by their very nature,
tend to be left-leaning. Australia’s ABC
is perpetually under fire for partisan reporting and the prevalence of left-wing
views in current affairs programmes; Britain’s illustrious BBC only slightly
less so.

It’s not hard to understand how this comes about. Journalists
distrustful of capitalism (and many journalists, being of an idealistic bent, tend to the left anyway) naturally gravitate toward state-owned media
organisations, seeing them as untainted by the profit motive. This becomes
self-perpetuating, since the more left-leaning an organisation becomes, the
more it attracts other people of the same persuasion. The result is often an ideological mindset
that permeates the entire organisation.

But while this can be reassuringly cosy for the employees, publicly
funded broadcasters have an obligation to make programmes that reflect the
views and interests of the entire community – not just those the broadcasters happen
to favour.

This is explicit in RNZ’s charter, which commits the
organisation to impartial and balanced coverage of news and current affairs.

It’s the duty of the chief executive, who also has the title
of editor-in-chief, to ensure this happens. But in this respect, Mr Cavanagh,
an Australian who was recruited from the aforementioned ABC in 2003, has been missing in
action.

Overall, RNZ presents a more balanced range of perspectives
than it used to. But on some programmes, a stubborn left-wing bias persists.

Kim Hill is the worst offender. This is a problem for
whoever runs RNZ, because she’s also its biggest name.

Chris Laidlaw lists to the left too, as does Jeremy Rose, a
journalist and producer who frequently crops up on Laidlaw’s Sunday morning show. Rose
appears to be on a lifelong mission to convince people that there are humane alternatives
to nasty, heartless capitalism, and assiduously trawls the world looking for examples (worker-owned co-operatives in Spain are a favourite).

He’s perfectly entitled to believe whatever he pleases, of course, but he
has no right to co-opt the resources of RNZ to pursue his fixation. It’s an
abuse of power to use a taxpayer-funded medium to promote pet ideological causes.

And while I used to be a firm admirer of Nine to Noon host Kathryn Ryan, I’ve reluctantly been forced to
file her under “L” too.

I had my first misgivings when she conducted a disgracefully
partisan interview during the furore over the beleaguered Auckland employers’
leader Alasdair Thompson in 2011. I was reminded of that episode when I recently
heard Ryan aggressively hectoring Chester Borrows, the Minister of Courts, over
a government proposal to take action against the partners of welfare cheats.

No one who heard the Borrows interview could doubt that Ryan
allowed her personal views and emotions to override her professional obligation
of impartiality (which, I stress, doesn’t preclude hard and rigorous
questioning).

An editor-in-chief who was doing his job properly would
crack down on such abuses, for two reasons.

The first and most important is that they breach RNZ’s duty to
the public to present information fairly and impartially. The second, more
pragmatic, reason is that the left-wing bias apparent in some of RNZ’s
programmes is hardly likely to endear the organisation to the politicians who
control its fate.

In saying this, I’m not suggesting for a moment that RNZ
should become a tame government puppet. That would be far worse than the status
quo.

But we all have an interest in Radio New Zealand surviving,
and a genuinely independent, non-partisan RNZ will be in a far stronger
position to defend itself than one that consistently leaves itself exposed to
allegations of bias.

Sunday, March 24, 2013

APOLOGISTS for the illegitimate Fijian government led by
Frank Bainimarama have melted away as the regime’s true thuggishness has been
exposed.

In the years following Bainimarama’s seizure of power, many
gave him the benefit of the doubt, deluding themselves that he was genuinely
concerned about breaking the dominance of the Fijian elite and protecting Fiji
Indians from discrimination.

But in the murk of Fijian politics, it seems no agenda is
pure. Whatever his motives at the start, Bainimarama has morphed into a
stereotypical melagomaniac.

In the unlikely event that anyone still believed in him
after he intimidated the media, suppressed dissidents, repeatedly postponed
elections and tore up a draft constitution (partly paid for by the New
Zealand), then the ugly truth must have finally dawned when Bainimarama defended
the police thugs shown on video beating up two prisoners.

There can no longer be any doubt that Bainimarama is the
Pacific’s Papa Doc. Which raises the question, what can we do?

We can certainly no longer look the other way and pretend it
isn’t happening. Neither can we expect that normal diplomatic tut-tutting will
cut any ice. Bainimarama is impervious to such gestures and grows more arrogant
by the month.

On an individual level, New Zealanders can protest by not
going to Fiji for their holidays. The smiling faces on tourist posters can’t
disguise the reality that Fiji is an oppressive police state, run by a tyrant
who is contemptuous of human rights and the rule of law.

But acts of individual conscience are not enough. New
Zealand and Australia should be thinking hard about the putting the squeeze on
Bainimarama by applying economic sanctions.

The argument against such sanctions is that they penalise
the innocent. Jobs will be lost and people may go hungry. But that argument
didn’t stop the world from blockading South Africa in the apartheid era, and
ultimately it worked. Bainimarama has shown that he is immune to anything less.

* * *

THE COUNCIL of Trade Unions has backed calls for a “living
wage” of $18.40 an hour. At the same time, it’s concerned about the high rate
of unemployment. But aren’t these two positions contradictory?

In a struggling economy that’s bound to shrink even further
as a result of the drought, bullying employers into paying higher wages hardly
seems likely to encourage them to take on more staff. It can only have the
opposite effect.

Now here’s an alternative idea. Rather than being made to
pay their rank-and-file employees more, why don’t companies pay their
executives less? It would free up money for investment in productive capacity,
possibly creating more jobs, while also making a powerful symbolic statement.

Corporate executives alone seem insulated against adverse
economic trends, their pay packages increasing year after year regardless of
performance. Just look at Solid Energy, where CEO Don Elder was paid $1.1
million for a year’s work even as the state-owned company’s finances were in
freefall.

That sum included a “performance” payment of more than
$300,000. By what sprinkling of corporate fairy dust was that justified? And
how come, in the year ended last June, 427 Solid Energy employees were paid
salaries of more than $100,000?

On the face of it, these sums bear no relationship to the
company’s fortunes. But such is the way these days in the corporate sector,
where stratospheric salaries and mysterious formulas for the payment of
so-called “at-risk” bonuses – “at-risk” apparently being management-speak for
“guaranteed” – are evidence of an out-of-control entitlement syndrome.

What a dramatic signal it would send if CEOs began taking
voluntary pay cuts. If business wants to enhance its image while at the same
time deflecting calls for higher wages for employees, it has the means to do
it.

* * *

THE SPORTS NEWS is no longer mere soap opera. It has become
a morality play.

Former All Black Zac Guildford was paraded before us on the
6 o’clock news, a rugby union minder at his side, and made to admit his
alcoholism. Did anyone else find this distasteful?

Guildford is an imperfect human being like the rest of us.
But because he’s a sporting hero, he’s considered public property.

The journalists at the press conference and the nation at
home sit in smug judgment. We now own people like Guildford and demand that
they appear before us to confess their sins and beg forgiveness.

Never mind that he thrills crowds with his talents on the
field. We want more. The price he pays for being a great rugby player is public
humiliation. Professional sport contracts don’t include words like privacy and
dignity.

Now we’ll all watch and wait for Guildford to transgress
again, so we can tsk-tsk and see the ritual abasement repeated. What a
degrading spectacle – for us as well as him.

Saturday, March 23, 2013

I read a lot in The
Spectator Australia about the supposed pervasive left-wing bias of the
Australian media, particularly in the papers published by the Fairfax group.
But not being a frequent reader of the mainstream Australian press, I rarely see direct
evidence of it.

However there’s a telling line in a piece reprinted in
today’s Dominion Post by Anne
Summers, a leading Fairfax columnist and former editor of the company’s Good Weekend magazine, which is
published with the Sydney Morning Herald
and Melbourne Age.

In a highly sympathetic article about the latest crisis to
envelop prime minister Julia Gillard, Summers suggests that previous Australian
leaders have been through similar turmoil and eventually emerged with their
reputations intact and even enhanced. She mentions Gough Whitlam – “now revered”
– and Malcolm Fraser, once seen as a “chaotic and divisive figure” but now greatly
admired by the left.

Then she delivers the line that most interested me. “Maybe
even John Howard will eventually become beloved”.

Hang on a minute. Howard won four elections in a row. He was
the second longest-serving Australian prime minister ever, after Sir Robert Menzies.
That suggests the Australian public liked him well enough, even if the Canberra
press gallery didn’t.

That one short sentence is massively revealing. It exposes the
enormous conceit of the left-leaning political commentariat.

They so despise Howard for being popular that they can’t
bring themselves to admit that he was. Election after election, they forecast
his defeat. Election after election, they were wrong. But they remain in denial
even now.

Worse than that, columnists such as Summers display contempt
for the Australian public. To them, it counts for nothing that Australian
voters thought highly enough of Howard to elect his government four times. Stupid,
naïve voters – what would they know? Why couldn’t they listen to their betters
in the media? There’s a deeply anti-democratic streak evident here.

I’ll admit Howard’s personal appeal was lost on me, but he
obviously struck a chord with the ordinary Australian. What’s more, his prime
ministership coincided with a golden era of prosperity and stability – not something that
could be said of the chaotic, shambolic government led by Gillard.

But commentators like Summers still insist Howard was a failure.
He must have been, because they say so. (The rest of her column, incidentally, was so risibly sycophantic about Gillard that I could only conclude that it doesn't matter to Summers whether anyone takes her seriously.)

On a similar note, it was intriguing to hear Kerry-Anne Walsh –
another Fairfax commentator – discussing the latest Australian leadership
crisis on Morning Report yesterday.
She repeatedly referred to Labour politicians by their first names – “Kevin”
for Kevin Rudd, “Simon” for Simon Crean.

As a dinosaur who still believes journalists should exercise
professional detachment, I thought this struck a jarring note. But if Walsh is
going to breach journalistic convention, then she should at least be
consistent. I therefore expect that the next time we hear her mention the leader
of the Liberal Party opposition, she’ll refer to him as “Tony”. And pigs will
soar aloft on gossamer wings.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, March 13. Note: this appeared before the election of the new pope.)

It’s highly ironic that the resignation of the pope, who is
seen by more than one billion Catholics as the world’s holiest man, was
accompanied by the sort of feverish gossip and speculation normally associated
with a Hollywood marital bustup, or perhaps the picking of a Melbourne Cup
winner.

There has been rampant conjecture about what caused him to
throw in the towel – the first pope to have done so for 600 years. Although
Catholic law allows the pope to step down, it’s assumed that the appointment is
for life.

This is connected with the belief that the pope is chosen by
God and only God can remove him, which explains why some conservative Catholics
were shocked and disappointed at Pope Benedict’s announcement.

So why did he choose to go? He said he was too tired to do the
job properly – which, from a secular perspective, seems a fair call at 85. It’s
suggested he didn’t want to suffer the fate of his predecessor, John Paul II,
who spent his last years trying to run the Church while weakened by Parkinson’s
disease and osteoarthritis.

But the rumour mills in Rome were suggesting other reasons.
Some say Benedict quit because he knew of a looming crisis within the Church
that he didn’t want to deal with, although it’s hard to imagine what could be
worse than the sexual abuse scandal that has already blackened the name of the Catholic
hierarchy.

Others suggest he was disheartened by his inability to make
headway against the Vatican bureaucracy. Pope Benedict, according to Vatican
watchers, was first and foremost an intellectual, with little experience at
running an institution – least of all a bureaucracy as byzantine as the Roman
Curia, Catholicism’s governing body.

In particular, it’s said that he faced obstruction in his
attempts to deal with the sexual abuse crisis, astonishing though that may
seem.

There is some evidence too that the pope no longer felt he
could trust some of his closest aides. This emerged after his butler, charged
with passing confidential papers to a journalist, told prosecutors that from
conversations he overheard while serving meals, it was clear the pope was being
kept in the dark about scandals in the Vatican.

On top of all this, reports persist of financial skulduggery
involving the Vatican Bank – not a new phenomenon, as anyone with memories of
the murky Banco Ambrosiano affair of the early 1980s can attest.

In that saga, the American archbishop Paul Marcinkus, head
of the Vatican Bank, was heavily implicated in corrupt dealings involving the
Mafia and a secret Masonic lodge called P2.

British author David Yallop – the same man who wrote Beyond Reasonable Doubt, about the conviction
of Arthur Allan Thomas for the murders of Harvey and Jeanette Crewe – produced
a book entitled In God’s Name, in
which he put forward an elaborate conspiracy theory surrounding the mysterious death
of Pope John Paul I, whose reign lasted only 33 days.

I was a practising Catholic at the time, and well remember
my shock on reading Yallop’s book. If even one quarter of it was true, it was
an appalling exposé of moral rot within the Vatican.

It’s reasonable to conclude from what we have read lately (much
of it written by Catholic journalists)that
the Catholic Church is no different from any other human institution. Wherever
power is concentrated there is also ambition, vanity, rivalry, envy and greed.
Devout Catholics naively assume their leaders are above all that, but of course
they are not.

But enough about possible explanations for the pope’s
resignation. The more pressing question now is who will replace him, and what
direction the Church will take under its new leader.

Many within the Church would say it desperately needs a new
pope who will throw open the windows of the Vatican, metaphorically speaking,
and let in some sunlight and fresh air.

There seems little prospect of that happening if the
conclave of cardinals reverts to tradition and elects an Italian pope. There
have been 217 Italian popes, far more than any other nationality. For the past
few centuries their domination has been almost total, broken in modern times
only by Benedict, a German, and his Polish predecessor.

Italy remains a powerful influence in the Church, with half
as many cardinals as the entire Southern Hemisphere, where more than half the
world’s Catholics now live. But the Italian cardinals are too closely
associated with the status quo, and for many Catholics that means corruption
and stagnancy.

In fact it’s time to ask whether any European pope can
revitalise the Church and restore its moral authority. The truth is that the
Church in Europe and North America is in steady decline; the real dynamism and
growth is in the New World.

That’s evident even in New Zealand, where Asian priests
increasingly make up for the shortage of New Zealanders in the priesthood, and where
congregations in many urban churches reflect the rapidly changing ethnicity of
our cities.

I believe that whoever succeeds Benedict will inherit not
one Church, but two. On the one hand there is the Church represented by the
Vatican and its discredited, calcified hierarchy – an institution that remains
stubbornly opaque and inscrutable in an age that increasingly demands
transparency and accountability.

Then there is the Church “on the ground”, which is a
different thing altogether.

Although no longer a practising Catholic, I still
occasionally attend Mass when staying with family members. And what I often see
when I go to Mass is a vibrant congregation of believers; good, devout people
who remain loyal Catholics despite having been repeatedly let down by so-called
“princes of the church” – people like the disgraced Cardinal Keith O’Brien of
Scotland, recently forced to resign after admitting “inappropriate” behaviour
with young priests.

It seems to me that these people – the “faithful” as they
known in Catholic jargon – remain committed to their religion despite the Church’s
leadership, rather than because of it. The first priority of whoever becomes
pope should be to rebuild their trust in, and respect for, the Vatican.

Catholics deserve better than to see their Church shamed by
some of the deeply flawed old men who control it. You have to wonder what Jesus
Christ would make of them.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when this happened; perhaps
somewhere between David Beckham and Tiger Woods.

There have always been occasional instances of sportsmen
whose lives became tabloid newspaper fodder (the footballers George Best and
Diego Maradona come to mind), but these days it’s constant.

Just think back over the past few months. It’s been one
melodrama after another.

There was Lance Armstrong fessing up as a drugs cheat on
Oprah’s TV show, a spectacle watched by millions.

Before that, there was the overwrought weeping and wailing over
Black Caps captain Ross Taylor’s sacking by new coach Mike Hesson (a man I
can’t see without being reminded of the character Brains from Thunderbirds).

There was the slow, painful unravelling, week by week, of the
Wellington Phoenix – a saga that came complete with a textbook villain (Gareth
Morgan) and a stoical hero (Ricki Herbert), nobly sacrificing himself for the
greater good.

There was the pantomime surrounding media darling Sonny Boy
Williams’ boxing match with the “lumbering oaf” (Sir Bob Jones’ description)
Francois Botha – a fight that was supposed to go for 12 rounds but was suddenly
and inexplicably reduced to 10 when it seemed Botha was getting the upper hand.

So many allegations and counter-allegations flew around in
the aftermath of that encounter that the media hardly knew which way to turn –
not that it mattered, since boxing is now so irredeemably sleazy that you have
to wonder who still takes it seriously.

But wait, there’s more. There was the international media
frenzy over the death of Oscar “Bladerunner” Pistorius’s glamorous girlfriend.

There was the sensational case of talented young English cricketer
Tom Maynard, fatally hit by a train while on drink and drugs and fleeing from police.
Even the Coro Street scriptwriters would have been
hard-pressed to come up with a more dramatic storyline.

And what about Australian rugby league glamour boy Ben
Barba, very publicly heading for a private clinic to deal with his personal “issues”
while his managers wrung their hands and solemnly vowed to stand by their wayward idol? It all seems tediously familiar.

Former All Black Zac Guildford, too, was back in the
headlines as he prepared to face disciplinary proceedings over an alleged
assault, although nothing so dramatic as the famous Rarotonga incident in which
he got drunk, took his clothes off and started hitting people.

Now he has been joined in the naughty corner by cricketer
Jeetan Patel – injured, we are told, in an “alcohol-fuelled” (aren’t they
always?) altercation with a pub bouncer. Explanation: he was struggling to cope
with the death of his mother. Pure soap.

In the circumstances, it seemed almost anti-climactic to watch
this week’s prissy tut-tutting over the behaviour of Black Cap Doug Bracewell,
whose only offence was having a few rowdy mates around to watch the rugby. For goodness
sake, couldn’t he have managed a drunken brawl or drug overdose? At least that
might have justified all the fuss.

To think that sporting heroes such as Brian Lochore, Peter
Snell and Bob Charles lived their lives in the public spotlight without a whiff
of scandal or notoriety. What a dull lot they must have been.

* * *

AS SOMEONE brought up in Hawke’s Bay, I wince when I hear
people refer to it as the Hawke’s
Bay.

It was never described thus when I lived there. It was
simply Hawke’s Bay, as it should be.

The only explanation for the use of the definite article is
that it’s a convention applied to some other regions. For example, we talk
about the Waikato, the Manawatu and theWairarapa.

But there’s no logical consistency here. We don’t refer to the
Otago or the Taranaki, still less to the Northland or the Southland. Why the
definite article attaches itself to some regional names but not others is a
mystery.

What we need is a statutory body empowered to impose some
consistency and slap heavy fines on non-compliers. In fact I would like to
nominate myself as chief executive, with a salary of – oh, $250,000 sounds
about right, with a performance bonus thrown in, which would of course be paid
regardless of how poorly I did the job.

* * *

THE LATE Phillip Leishman personified a species of
broadcaster fast approaching extinction.

He wasn’t flamboyant and he didn’t have a big ego. He had a
style New Zealanders related to easily: not flashy, but relaxed and personable.

It was probably just as well that Leishman carved himself a
niche in the last 15 years of his life with his golf programme, HSBC Golf Club, because mainstream television
programmers have long since lost interest in broadcasters like Leishman. Wrong
age, wrong sex.

The sole survivor of that breed is Peter Williams, another
consummate professional. I hope I’m not putting a hex on him by pointing this
out.

About Me

I am a freelance journalist and columnist living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand. In the presence of Greenies I like to boast that I walk to work each day - I've paced it out and it's about 15 metres. I write about all sorts of stuff: politics, the media, music, wine, films, cycling and anything else that piques my interest - even sport, though I admit I don't have the intuitive understanding of sport that most New Zealand males absorb as if by osmosis. I'm a former musician (bass and guitar) with a lifelong love of music that led me to write my book 'A Road Tour of American Song Titles: From Mendocino to Memphis', published by Bateman NZ in July 2016. I've been in journalism for more than 40 years and like many journalists I know a little bit about a lot of things and probably not enough about anything. I have never won any journalism awards.